


Bully

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:19:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8250503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Kozume Kenma is colorblind. All he can remember is drowning in a dark, dark, ocean- with nobody to see him choke and all the eyes blind to his drowning. The sea strangles him and nobody notices, but that's okay. He'll deal with it, he's fine on his own; he always has been.Until he gets enrolled in a fancy spoiled rich kid high school, and the memories of a bully with spikes of black hair and cat eyes that should belong to the fifth-grade take form to haunt him in real life. Except for this time, the bully is better, the bully is nicer- allegedly. Supposedly. Kenma must decide whether or not to separate his past and his future- and which decision will result the bully's hand either pulling him to the surface of a sea he can't escape from himself, and which will result in the hand leaving him to choke once more at the dark sea floor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So.... *cackles* I have fallen into the Haikyuu fandom. Mars almighty I am sorry. *gets slapped* ....alas, I regret nothing.

Kenma Kozume was color blind.

 

He had been since he was born- he remembered looking at the sky with his parents, little children his age swarming around him in groups, yelling and laughing. One of his most vivid memories was when one of the boys pointed to the sunset and yelled, "mommy, why's the sky red all of a sudden?" He had looked at it, scrutinizing, internally debating for a couple of seconds.

 

Hadn't it  _always_ been red?

 

Red, endless red- a heaping of disproportionate gradients and suffusions of darkness against light, slate patterned with the telltale strips of pink and the accompaniment of brown. That was what the sky was. That was what Kozume Kenma thought it was, at least.

 

Later, he found out he was diagnosed with  _protanopia-_ or what most people called "red-green color blindness". Nobody else in his nuclear family had it- so when his parents discovered Kenma confused numerous colors, they had rushed to doctors and tests and treatments see what exactly was wrong with him. In the following day, they had  figured out Kenma must have gotten it genetically from his late grandfather, through his dormant mother; they had diagnosed that Kenma couldn't see things other people saw; they had diagnosed the fact that Kenma had "problems". 

 

Kenma called BS. Sure, he couldn't see always differentiate between the shades of traffic, but he  _walked_ to school through peaceful neighborhoods; the only dangers that had been posed were the sakura petals floating through the air that may have been triggered a sneeze or two. His life wasn't terribly different. His life wasn't so different it made him disabled. He was the same, like everybody else. He was normal.

 

So he really didn't have a reason to tell anybody else about it.

 

That had remained his motto about up until fifth grade. Fifth grade was the unrolling of a lot of events; fifth grade his straightforward life rolled and got entangled in the prickly hands of  _parent divorcement, the death of his grandparents,  family division-_ and a whole lot of other problems that had suddenly ruptured, as violently and as intrusively as a volcano. In fifth-grade Kenma had mutated, matured- perhaps he had not been changed so drastically by fifth grade that his entire manner of existence changed, but his natural anti-social personality developed into a solid barrier of isolation between him and others. The possibility of telling somebody about his colorblindness dropped from the range of  _unnecessary_ to  _never._ _Never, ever, ever._ It was a secret that he would never be willing to give up. A secret he trapped in the deepest recesses of his brain and kept locked between his teeth, sealed between lips that would never open for a stranger to see.  

 

 _Middle school-_ middle school was a mess. A blurred, indistinct mess. Kenma remembered trapping himself in a corner, looking at people's backs, studying their habits, their words, the structures of their lives so well that he knew what to do to keep his secret a secret. He didn't want to get close to anyone. Or else his secret would probably leak out; would leak out of shut lips, unintentional and inevitable. He had no desire for such a consequence.

 

So with all the free time that came from crossing a social life off of his _to-do list,_ Kenma studied. He played games when his mother came up to his room and told him that his desktop light inside his room would be too bright at night, so he had to shut it off as to not disturb the neighbors. But other than that, he studied. Not just the things that were in the textbooks they handed out in school- things that he found at the library, in the philosophy or chemistry or maths section, things that he never knew before. In seventh grade, he picked up a book about a commonplace shape. Trigonometry was factual, logical- it followed a close pattern and broke apart chunks of a common figure, and all Kenma had to do was observe, turn it over in his head, think- he had to do a simplified, far more basic form of what everybody else did naturally, but instead of doing it through socialization, he did it with pencil and paper. He _needed to do it,_ needed to feel the understandable conciseness of math beating through his head, the pattern of logic unfurling throughout every bone. He needed to feel the sense to it, to completely understand the easiness of math that the complex, irrational workings of human meanderings and mortal minds so obviously lacked. Feeling the rhythm, understanding the beat, _knowing_ the logic- it soothed the mind that was so helpless in the real world, flailing as helplessly as a fish without fins, as helplessly as a boy without dreams.

 

 He learned trig- the author of the book was good, very helpful, very detailed- and then Kenma studied chemistry in another book. Chemistry was interesting. Facts he had never known before, the physical makeup of things he so desperately wanted to know; Kenma could let the details seep in, melt into his brain, and  Kenma had another tool at his disposal, one that he hoped would make up for his lack of  interaction but knew never would.

 

And then philosophy in 8th grade,  wonderings of the men whose brains were not just things in their heads, but things that held a convoluted system of metacognition and the effects  of perspective- their words held infinite the way worlds could hold possibilities. Kenma dived into the worlds willingly, threw himself into the realm that books provided- _perhaps not just for the sake of going into the world they described-_ and Kenma read. Devoured. Letting the structure of the words unfurl in his brain and flow through the network of his thoughts like blood in his veins. Kenma studied, studied, studied- _trapped himself, trapped himself, trapped himself_ \- and by the end of 8th grade he was considered an academic prodigy. _A smart boy._

 

He skipped a grade and got enrolled in a prodigious, fancy-name high school, one for either the supremely rich or the preciously-prized-by-education few. Kenma happened to be one of the latter- the school, upon seeing his grades and the reports from his teacher, had immediately offered him a complete scholarship. His mother, who was now worked to the bone for every cent since his parent' divorce, had seen the offer- the realization of what had needed to happen struck Kenma in the soul. He had watched his gentle mother with a foreboding sense of dread as she  told him that he would be okay, nobody would tease him even if he skipped freshman year. He was the ideal analytic that elite schools just so loved to take into possession. 

 

Did that make up for his "disability?" Kenma wondered.

 

The thought, unlike so many others, was not an absent-minded one. 

 

* * * * * * *

 

It was the first day of his life as a second year.

 

Well, in Kenma's mind, not really- second years, Kenma had come to accept, was the term people used for high schoolers that had already been to high school, the high schoolers that had returned to torture but had not _quite_ been burned alive by it yet, like the seniors had. And yet they weren't the ignorant younglings freshmen were- no, they had already had a taste of what  _high school_ was like. No, Kenma was not a sophomore. Kenma was as ignorant as the youngling first years. Kenma was the unfortunate soul that had been plucked from his last year of middle school and then tossed straight into the boiling cauldron of education that  _second years_ had to endure. He was the one that had to skip a grade- a crucial, crucial grade, the first year of high school, and no matter how much the school treasured Kenma and his "brilliant" ways of thinking, Kenma was still the one that lacked _that crucial, crucial  year._

 

Kenma's hands tightened on the straps of his backpack.

 

Inhaling deeply, the pudding-head stepped into the school, flinching when noise suddenly exploded around him as he entered the building. It was the bustle of high school, the vitality found in teenagers bursting in noise and chatter and  _interaction_ around him. As Kenma watched, he already saw a pretty, mature-looking girl giggle flirtatiously as a tall boy with a sleazy smile but handsome features sling an arm across her shoulders, the spikes of his black hair prominent as he leaned down to whisper something in her ear. She giggled again, a delicate blush spreading across her carefully powdered cheeks. Kenma struggled to fight down the familiar feeling of drowning in his chest; he averted his eyes, fixing them on the ground and walked quickly to his locker, knowing that he would have to hurry considering it was on the first floor and his classes were on the third.

 

He felt somebody push past him, felt the presence of the crowd expand and undulate. He became painfully aware of the surrounding group that thrummed and churned with the pulse of rowdiness, and Kenma's mouth grew dry. He didn't like this- not at all. So many people. And yet no eyes, no eyes that could really, genuinely  _see..._

 

He felt his heart beat once, twice, the sole representation of familiarity in a dark, dark ocean.

 

Kenma reached his locker and hastily entered his combo. It opened on the first try- he nabbed the things he needed and headed off to class. The crowd was still painfully existent around him, but Kenma tried not to focus on the color of their clothes or pants or hair. Instead, he let his eyes rest on the plain black and white notebooks he had ordered for calculus, soothing in their distinguishability. 

 

It was alright. There would be no drowning. There would be no choking. Even if he remained alone at the bottom of the dark, dark ocean....

 

Shaking the thoughts of black water away from his head, Kenma inhaled again as he stepped into the class. Immediately, one of the only two students turned to look at him; Kenma started in surprise. His hair was black and white, the edges stylized and gelled into sharp points on either side of his head; the look was faintly familiar.  _The Great Horned Owl,_ Kenma thought absentmindedly as he took in the boy's hair.  _Why did he have a hairstyle like the Great Horned Owls?_

 

 

"Hey, Akaashiiii, don't you think he's a little too young to be in this class?"

 

Kenma twitched nervously. 

 

The boy sitting next to him ( _Akaashi,_ Kenma presumed) replied without lifting his eyes from the book. "I'm sure that he's fine, Bokuto-san. Few people get lost in the hallways and the name of the class is posted outside."

 

It was true. Said teacher had taped giant words of AP CALC BC across the window of the classroom so that it would be the first thing passerby and entering students would see. 

 

"Hmmm," The boy with the strange hair contemplated loudly. He was tall and looked older; even folded up in the chair, Kenma could see the length of his lean legs, the litheness of his arms. And holy crap, what were with his arms?  The muscles were clearly defined, but not so large he was burly-probably an athlete, but not the overly stereotypical type with bulging biceps that society had spun. The look he had was more like he had to suffer through harsher conditions, and he was the product nature had spit out; a lean, strong, survivor, bitten at the edges and with the faint traces of the wind in his eyes. There was a spontaneous, bursting air to him, like the energy inside of the body wasn't quite contained by just his skin. His eyes glimmered an eerie gold, just like the owl his hair was shaped after- he wore the school uniform, but with a loosened tie, and the grin that was spread across his face was as severe as one of the devil's cackled promises. Kenma, on reflex, observed the way his large eyes flickered, the definition of his body and the shortness of his nail beds- most definitely an athlete, but not a fool, judging from the way his style was clean-cut and the way his eyes took in the details of his surroundings, the atmosphere, and, most worryingly, Kenma himself. 

 

Kenma hurried to sit down.

 

"Soo, kid," 'Bokuto' grinned, leaning forward and perching his elbows on his knees. Kenma's stomach tightened inexplicably. "Did you hear about the fight in the courtyard this morning?" A sleazy grin stretched across his face, golden eyes gleaming as he rested his head on the sides of pale knuckles.

 

A tic threatened to break out across Kenma's face. Fight? He wasn't too surprised- the sense that everybody in the school was trouble waiting to make itself known had lodged itself in Kenma's gut for ages but there was still a nagging sense of uncertainty bubbling over in his stomach.

 

 "...Yeah," Kenma lied, averting his eyes, remaining aware of how Bokuto's gold eyes were still boring into him. The attention made his stomach curdle, tingled his already hypersensitive nerves like the figments of frost. The eerie, raking discomfort only increased when he saw the other guy's eyes flit towards him. 

 

"So you  _are_ a newbie! Told you so, Akaashi!" The white-haired man leaned back triumphantly, a grin burning lazily on his features. Kenma flinched in surprise.

 

"What do you mean?" Kenma asked, mouth dry. He swallowed.

 

"We're not allowed in the courtyard in the first week of school," The man with heavy-lidded eyes said, lifting his gaze to meet Kenma's.

 

Oh.

 

Oh  _shit._

 

"AP Calc. You look like you could barely pass for a freshman," Bokuto continued, gleaming eyes fixated on the twitching boy in front of him. "You shouldn't be taking this class- period. And if you are, that means you're one smart kid. Most likely, if you're taking this class and you're a freshman, and you're the first one that's gotten here for an academic scholarship." He let out a low, long whistle. "You're the first one for  _ages."_ The wet flash in his eyes engulfed gold orbs momentarily, like the sticky twinkle of drying amber-paralyzing and with the painful promise of  inevitability.

 

Kenma was silent.

 

There was a breathless pause, lingering stickily in the air, waiting to seize hold of the next speaker's words. 

 

"Bokuto-san," the other man closed his book, not including a single finger wedged between the floppy pages, and fixed his eyes on Kenma. "Please stop freaking him out."

 

"Ehh?? Akaashi, you're too mean. I was only talking to him."

 

"Nevertheless Bokuto-san, I think you should stop." 

 

"But Akaashiiiii, he's a _scholarship student_...."

 

Kenma blinked again, eyes focusing on the dark-haired man, who was warily gazing at "Bokuto", a slightly exasperated look on his face. His hair was dark blue, bangs cropped short across his forehead and tufts sticking out slightly at the sides; below thick eyebrows were heavy-lidded, slate gray eyes, toned an ideally bold shade so that the two features would complement each other flawlessly. His features were delicate and precise, tinkered to satisfy an image of distinct, unusually, roughly natural allure. His skin was pale and the air around him dappled with the cool rays of equilibrium; he was the antithesis of Bokuto, who looked as if the energy inside made the surface of his skin glow. This man's entire presence was made prominent by his distinct aura of calmness, the same way frost would gather across the planes of a leaf.

 

Fidgeting in his seat, Kenma pulled out one of his pens and simultaneously pulled up one of his legs to curl the rest of his body against. The exchange in the background remained constant, Akaashi's calm statements a polar opposite compared to Bokuto's loud, bursting style of speech; thankfully, their dialogue gradually began to drift away from Kenma and the topic of his scholarship.  

 

"Bokuto-san, I think it's more likely your neighbor doesn't like you because of the cat vomit, not because she dislikes your hair."

 

"But she scowls whenever she sees me! It's like my hair's done something _personally_ to her! I swear, Akaashi, I'm not kidding! She hates me! It must be something personal!"

 

"The cat vomit _was_ personal, Bokuto-san...."

 

....Cat vomit? Kenma had never had a pet before, but the very notion of dealing with another being's vomit was enough to clear his mind of the idea. 

 

The door opened and Kenma heard another person step in. At the new arrival, Bokuto cried out something, and Kenma, having adjusted his ears to take in all that the white haired man said, listened:

 

"Hey hey hey, Kuroo!"

 

Kenma blinked again, fiddling with the pen in his hand. _Kuroo_... The name sounded distinctly familiar, and it unlodged a feeling of unease; coldness crept across his internal workings like the breath of a demon, sinister and mischevious. _Kuroo_. Kenma tasted the structure of the word, thinking.

 

Abruptly, the memories of fifth grade unfurled in his mind; a divorce- somebody yelling, Kenma crying, the spikes of black hair... Kenma's hand spasmed, the pen dropping soundlessly to the floor. 

 

He was drowning-

 

"Oh, my dear brother Bokuto. How nice it is to see you again." The sickening drawl was like arsenic to Kenma's ears, the predatory smirk almost audible in his voice.

 

_Drowning-_

 

"Oya oya oya, who's this new guy?"

 

_He was drowning, drowning, drowning-_

 

 

Kenma looked up, almost against his will, to meet lazy, catlike eyes. 

 

_and this time, somebody had  finally noticed._

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> MY KUROKO NO BASKET FAN FICTION REMAINS UPDATED WITH INSPIRATION BUBBLING AND FINGERS NOT MOVING- ahhh it's frustrating/// move those fat fingers, i swear i'm working on it IM SORRY FOR THE LACK OF UPDATES /// but regardless i decided to start a Haikyuu! fic as a means to vent the inspiration from watching the volleyball anime ( will never get it out otherwise) this blasted volleyball anime which has decided to torture me with the tauntings of season 3... ah, ah, ah... i should've never started... i'm already too addicted...  
> *sighs*  
> Feedback would be appreciated. Slaps to the face, well... all I can say is, I'm sorry. Thank you so muchhh for reading, minna!


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